TOPIC:
Gay and Bitter

For
reasons that I am only now beginning to understand, most of the first
half of my life and certainly my youth was spent in a state of
bitterness. What does it mean to be bitter? How would we even define
bitterness? One dictionary definition that I read pretty much sums it
up I think. It says that bitterness is characterized by intense
antagonism or hostility. In a large measure that sums up my teenage
years. I also believe that it was the source of most of my suicidal
thoughts, of which there were many, and actually a few suicide attempts
mixed in.

So what
was I bitter about or bitter toward? Well I
know that I was angry at my dad for dying and leaving me feeling
stranded as a boy. I also know that I was very bitter and angry with
God and outright hostile toward Him because He allowed my dad to die.
“How DARE you do this to me,” I used to yell to Him with my fist raised
in the air in defiance and anger. I know what I'm talking about when I
assert that it is very difficult to worship the most holy God in one
breath and curse Him in the next breath. It can lead to feelings of
intense bitterness toward God, and a huge amount of self-destructive
thoughts and tendencies. It is impossible to honor and glorify God and
curse Him at the same time!

Maybe I'm
generalizing, but I do
believe that a guy being homosexual and bitterness are not that
unrelated, mainly because at least in my case, and based on my own
personal experience, I felt that I was being shortchanged in life by
God. And that made me very bitter towards Him and towards myself and
everyone around me.

I
recently heard a message about bitterness and the five undesirable
qualities that you nearly always find in bitter people.

Bitter
people always justify their bitterness. It is the fault of others
that
they are bitter. It is that they have been shortchanged and in many
cases ostracized by others that makes them bitter towards others and of
course toward the God who made them.

Bitter
people are always overly critical. You can never do anything that
meets
their requirements. They are never satisfied with anyone's effort no
matter how real, genuine, or benevolent. They are always thinking of
themselves and how much better they are than everyone else. Such
thoughts feed their bitterness and even amplify it, making it even more
of a quality that is undesirable in them. Because people do not
generally like to be around people who are overly critical and bitter,
they are avoided by others which, amazingly enough, makes them even
more bitter! It is a very vicious cycle which can lead to severe
depression, antisocial behavior and worse.

Bitter
people celebrate other people's misfortunes. They are often happy
when
bad things happen to other people. In large part that is because they
feel they have been shortchanged and so it makes them happy when they
see others suffer calamity because to them, those people deserve it by
being inferior in some way. Or they are jealous of people who may not
be bitter and may have a life that they are jealous of. If there is one
thing a bitter person cannot stand, it's being around a genuinely happy
person. When negative things happen to those people, bitter people
rejoice because they feel like those folks are getting their just
desserts. Do you know of anyone that you like to be around because they
celebrate the misfortune of others? Me neither!

Bitter
people famously write off entire people groups. They will write off
the
entire races of people or people with certain disabilities or
characteristics or annoying habits or whatever. It seems that high
schools have a lot of different people groups that bitter students love
to put down as inferior to themselves. Maybe harassment, bullying, and
bitterness are somehow related in the high school context. Bitter
people lump entire groups of people together whether it be dozens,
millions or billions of people into the same group and think that they
are losers and certainly inferior to the bitter person who's making
that analysis. How pitiful and sad that is! How self-destructive to the
bitter person that is as well.

Bitter
people can rarely see their own bitterness, and on those rare
occasions
where they might, it is always justified and there is always a suitable
excuse given for that bitterness. It very rarely works to point out the
bitterness of an individual, and often it will make you a target of
their caustic bitterness and ridicule. So most individuals leave bitter
people to their own devices realizing that they are wasting their time
trying to get through to them.

In
my early struggles as a homosexual teenager, I struggled a lot with
bitterness and many of the above undesirable qualities were found in
me. I look back at myself at that time and wonder how any human being
in their right mind could possibly be a friend or someone that wanted
to be around such a bitter person. In fact I did have very few friends,
whether straight or gay, and I counted it as being because I was
defective or homosexual rather than because I was bitter. I was so
bitter at times that I couldn't even see my own bitterness! That
estrangement from friends and companions often led to my desire to end
my own life and I was completely blinded to the truth of my situation.

The
thing that I did not realize well then, that I understand much better
now, was that bitterness towards any people group or individual will
make a relationship with God impossible. I believe it is
impossible to be bitter towards other individuals or people groups and
have a loving and worshipful relationship with Jesus Christ. No, in
fact I KNOW it! I have never personally seen someone hateful and bitter
towards people and yet maintain a true and real relationship
with
Jesus Christ (based on their words and deeds) and would be amazed if
any human could achieve that. But since that is impossible, I know that
I will never see it happen. However there are many people who are
bitter towards others and fool themselves into thinking they
have
a relationship with God or Jesus Christ; they are merely
deluding
themselves and setting themselves up for a huge let down when they
stand before the great throne some day. Will these bitter self-deluded
people be the ones Jesus mentions in Matthew 7:23 (“Then I will tell
them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”)?
Something to think about.

Someone
who is struggling with bitterness can do three things with that
bitterness.

They
can hold that bitterness inside. Doing it can lead to
self-destruction
in an amazingly short amount of time. Many times they cannot forgive
others for the wrongs that may have actually been done toward them. So
in many cases they hold the bitterness inside of themselves and it
works like a cancer to eventually destroy them from within. In some
cases, perhaps these are the people who go on shooting sprees when the
bitterness finally overcomes them and they totally lose their grip on
reality. Sadly, I think that for some homosexuals this attempt to hold
the bitterness inside can lead to suicide. I certainly do not believe
that homosexual suicides are necessarily always related to bitterness,
but do think that in some cases bitterness can be a contributing factor
to a homosexual killing himself.

They
can let that bitterness come out in their lives. These are the
people
who often times will take the five undesirable qualities of bitter
people named above and actually let these be seen by all, and may
actually be proud to be publicly bitter and put down other individuals
and people groups in order to prop themselves up. In some twisted way,
they may actually claim that they are proud to be bitter. They almost
always will claim that they are justified in that. Because of the
bitterness that is so obvious in their life for all to see, these guys
may be actually more susceptible to suicide because people in general
will avoid them like the plague. And actually, who could blame people
for avoiding such persons?

They
can dig up their bitterness and face it head-on and deal with it in a
mature and effective manner. I believe by far the easiest way to
deal
with bitterness is with that magic word that makes most of us
uncomfortable when we hear it, forgiveness.
When you are bitter towards a person or people group it is very
difficult to forgive them whether or not they are actually guilty of
doing anything to you individually. A person who deals with bitterness
and forgives and puts aside that bitterness through the miracle of
forgiveness can start on the road to amazing healing in his life. Once
an individual starts down the road of forgiveness, amazingly enough a
genuine relationship with God and Jesus Christ is now possible if that
forgiveness of others is genuine. Of course in my case where I had
bitterness towards God, it wasn't that I needed to forgive God, for He
had done nothing wrong, but I needed to acknowledge to God and to me
that God was not guilty and it was my selfish attitudes that had led to
the bitterness and blame of God for the problems that I faced. So no,
you cannot really forgive God, since God can never do anything that
requires forgiveness, but you can work through the bitterness that set
you apart from Him by forgiving the humans around you who may or may
not be worthy of forgiveness. You can also work on realizing that God
had a greater plan in mind when he allowed you to face the
struggles; as you have read elsewhere on this website most of
that
involves bringing glory to God's name and to the name and person of
Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4:32 says “Be kind and compassionate to one
another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” And
Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive men when they sin
against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do
not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Don't overlook that very key verse! Again, this is further evidence
that if you harbor bitterness and do not forgive others, you cannot
have a true and eternal relationship with the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.

So
it seems that forgiveness is a huge part of addressing bitterness and
putting it to rest once and for all. So how can one address bitterness
in an effective way that kills it off forever? First of all, you can
acknowledge the bitterness that you harbor. Realize that it is there
and that it is real and that is not going to go away by itself. I have
to admit from personal experience that acknowledging bitterness when I
was experiencing much bitterness within me was something that just did
not happen that easily. Again, if I did realize that I was bitter, it
was justified bitterness and therefore okay, at least in my twisted yet
incorrect view of things.

The second
thing that you can do to
address bitterness is to forgive and release the offender or offenders
that contributed to or caused the bitterness that you hold inside.
Again, if you are bitter towards God, forgiveness of Him is not
possible, but you can acknowledge that He is the Lord of your life and
acknowledge that He has his reasons, which most likely are not known to
you, for allowing you to experience what you have experienced thus far
in your life. If an individual has offended you and contributed to your
bitterness, it is very difficult to release him or her and to achieve
forgiveness of the person especially if they feel they have not wronged
your or do not desire your forgiveness.

Remember
that when
Jesus went to the cross for us, it was a huge act of forgiveness of the
human race even though none of us had actually asked for forgiveness;
even today millions of people walk around all self righteous and not
thankful for the forgiveness that they have been given through the
blood of Christ. How ungrateful is that! Go back and read that verse
from Ephesians 4:32 listed above if there is any doubt in your mind
about your need to forgive in order to address bitterness that is
keeping your relationship with Jesus Christ from becoming real and
everlasting. I will mention this until I am blue in the face, but
bitterness towards others will destroy any potential relationship you
might have with God or His Holy Son. And the last thing you want to
hear come out of Jesus's mouth when you're standing before His throne
on judgment day is, "who are you?"

I
certainly am not claiming
that all homosexuals are bitter. I can only look to my own experience
and my own life to see how my bitterness nearly led to my death on a
number of occasions. But based on the five undesirable qualities of
bitter people I listed above, I believe that while homosexuals do not
corner the market on bitterness, there is a lot of bitterness in the
struggle with one's homosexuality. That's been my personal experience,
at least. Your mileage may vary.

If you
struggle with thoughts
of suicide, perhaps examining your life for signs of bitterness might
be revealing to you. The good news is that if you can address the
bitterness in your life, as I have struggled to do although not always
with 100% success, life can be a lot more tolerable and of course your
relationship with Jesus Christ can be infinitely better since...well,
do I need to repeat it yet again about bitterness and a true
relationship with God?

My
personal opinion based on my own life
is that bitterness does not cause homosexuality, but in many cases is a
unfortunate by-product of that. And bitterness, if not addressed and
dealt with, can lead to disastrous consequences, both in this life and
the next, for the person who is bitter, whether straight or gay.

You
will never see this advertised by a pharmaceutical company, but perhaps
the strongest drug in the entire universe is forgiveness (no, it's not
an actual product, it is the act of forgiveness!). It is safe,
effective, very inexpensive, and can have lifelong consequences that
are very desirable. It is the one “drug” that I hope is very addicting.
And unlike almost anything you can buy at a drugstore, whether by
prescription or over-the-counter, forgiveness can tremendously improve
your relationship with Jesus Christ today, tomorrow, and forever. And
the only side effects that it exhibits is a better
relationship
with God, the other human beings on this planet, and with yourself as
well.

So my
prescription for bitterness is to take your
bitterness before the Cross of Christ, lift it up to Him to help you
address and remove it, pray for wisdom and forgiveness from the King of
Kings, take two large helpings of forgiveness toward others (whether
they deserve forgiveness or not—I know, that's a tough one!) and get a
good night's sleep. And of course call Jesus in the morning to bless
His Holy Name!